


constellation falling into place

by wraysford



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 20:54:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1048460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wraysford/pseuds/wraysford
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>For some reason, the last part is what sticks in Nico’s head,</i> you were quick<i>, in that awed, painfully genuine tone of Lewis’, but, he hastily reminds himself, how fast or slow he was back then doesn’t matter anymore<i> or, wherein Nico goes to university and Lewis races</i></i></p>
            </blockquote>





	constellation falling into place

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [gemjam](http://gemjam.livejournal.com) as part of the [understeers](http://understeers.livejournal.com) fic exchange: "In his late teens, Nico decided to go to university instead of continuing to pursue his racing career. When he ends up dating an F1 driver, he can't help but wonder how his life would have turned out if he'd stuck with it."

Nico’s four years old when he tells his father he wants to be a racing driver.

He’s eighteen when he tells his father he’s going to university. The _instead_ goes unspoken, but they both know it’s there.

So he goes to university in London. He moves into a shitty student flat and spends two years doing _normal_ things. He goes out drinking until stupid times in the morning and rushes to lectures half-dressed because he overslept and messes around with a girl he fancies from the flat on the floor above his. He watches Michael’s last championship win on a fuzzy television in the student union building. He’s persuaded into joining the table tennis society and sucks off a boy from his Structural Mechanics class who tells him afterwards that he’s not gay, but thanks anyway, and pulls all-nighters to write essays on computational fluid dynamics that he forgot about earlier. He reads about Alonso’s first and second titles in the British papers.

He doesn’t think about racing himself, not any more.

He doesn’t.

(Well.

There’s a party the first term of his fresher year. Not a proper party, just what Nico’s mother would probably insist on calling an ‘intimate get-together’, but still. Patrick from his course invites him – it’s at his flat – and Nico’s never one to say no to free alcohol or potentially getting laid or even just a night away from the endless calculations and essays that beckon him in his own flat, so he goes.

He doesn’t get laid but he does get away and he does get alcohol, and two out of three isn’t bad.

But sometime during the night he ends up sprawled on Patrick’s sofa, watching a terrible British reality show, where a woman who’s clearly been told she can sing by her family alone is wailing her way through a rendition of _My Heart Will Go On._ They’ve already had to sit through a dramatically-edited montage of her life thus far, complete with her earnest assurances that all she’s ever wanted to do is sing. She was _born_ to sing, apparently.

“Yeah, right, no one’s born to do things,” someone says, and Nico lifts his head enough to see that there are two girls from one of his aerodynamics seminars sat with their backs against his sofa.

The other girl, the brunette, laughs and throws an empty beer can at the television. It misses woefully. “Don’t crush her dreams! I bet you had something you wanted to be. You know, when you were younger?”

“In the Spice Girls,” the first girl admits, finally, and they both collapse into giggles again. Nico lets his head drop back down onto the sofa, the alcohol still a pleasant buzz in his veins although he’s rapidly sobering up; his mother and father like to argue over whether it was the German or Finnish genes that made for his reasonably good alcohol tolerance.

He vaguely overhears the same question being repeated to a few others around the room. There are one or two assertions of firemen and policemen, hysterical laughter following someone shamefully admitting to wanting to be in a boyband, the standard astronaut and princess answers from a few people whose names he doesn’t know.

But he’s not really listening, and so when someone pokes him in the shoulder blade he jerks, startled.

It’s the first girl from earlier, smiling at him drunkenly. “What about you, Nico?” she asks. “What did you want to be when you grew up? C’mon, tell us! You’re not allowed to pick like, astronaut again, that’s just boring. You could totally be in a boyband, though!”

Nico shrugs, stiffly. “I don’t know.”

It’s not that he doesn’t want to answer _her_ ; she’s pretty and wearing a low-cut top and probably capable of intelligent conversation when she hasn’t ingested half a bottle of cheap vodka. It’s not that he doesn’t know the answer to the question, either. He knows exactly what he wanted to be when he was younger, what he’d wanted to be until just a year or two ago, and though that hadn’t been an astronaut or in a boyband to most it would probably seem equally unattainable and fantastical. But he’d been practical about it: he’d paid attention in Physics so that he could understand the telemetry data the engineers would show him in the garages, he’d gone to the gym and played football and insisted on planning his own meals to stick to a fitness regime, he’d nearly memorised all the career stats of Fangio and Senna and Schumacher and his own dad.

“Oh, _shut up_ ,” the girl says, rolling her eyes. “You have to know.”

“Yeah, tell us!” the other girl pipes in, elbowing her friend out of the way to stand over Nico too. He’s starting to feel a little claustrophobic, surrounded by the sofa on one side and two heavily inebriated freshers on the other. “You do know! Everyone knows what they wanted to be.”

He does know.

It’s just that he’s afraid that it’s still what he wants.

“I liked tennis,” he says, eventually, and although it’s not a lie the words taste sour in his mouth. “I wanted to be a tennis player.”

“Watch out, we’ve got Boris Becker over here,” calls Patrick, obviously overhearing the conversation, and the laughter that follows is loud and raucous enough that Nico can lose himself in it and forget about the real answer.

But he doesn’t remember any of that night the next morning, so that doesn’t count as thinking about being a driver. It doesn’t.)

 

Third year is the first time he sees Lewis on television.

He’s just woken up in his student flat after yet another all-nighter. His head is hammering and his mouth tastes like shit, and here’s the sound of two people arguing one floor down and a whole mug of coffee appears to be spilt on the carpet, but Nico isn’t focusing on any of those things. His eyes are drawn across the room, because the television’s on.

It’s muted, and he vaguely recalls turning it on for background light at some point during the early hours of the morning, but the picture is clear as day.

There’s the ITV logo in the top corner and that row of initials and lap times to the left, and the long strip of asphalt and the familiar striped kerbs, red and white flickering in his vision, making him squint through tired eyes - and then there are two blurs of red and silver, closely followed by another red.

It’s a Ferrari chasing two McLarens round the Turn 9 hairpin of the Sepang circuit during the last lap of the 2007 Malaysian Grand Prix.

Nico manages to dig the remote control out from the folds of the duvet covers and press the mute button just in time to hear, “ – of the final corner they come, and Lewis Hamilton, the young Briton Lewis Hamilton comes through in second place! What a fabulous performance by him in only his second race –”

And that makes Nico jolt.

Because he was always the first. He was the first to switch to single-seaters and the first to race in Formula 3 Euroseries and Masters of Formula 3, and the first to win in them both, and the first to test an actual Formula One car – it’d always been him telling a wide-eyed, awed Lewis what it was like, trying to explain how it felt to throw 500kg of carbon fibre and aluminium and raw, unadulterated power around the Circuit de Catalunya. And now Lewis is four points behind the reigning world champion in the 2007 World Championship standings – and Nico, Nico is still in bed at 11pm on a Tuesday morning.

He watches the coverage until Lewis gets out of the car, fist pumping in the air, throwing his arms up in victory, clasping Fernando’s gloved hand tightly. Nico doesn’t even realise his hand is clenched in the sheets, tightly enough to whiten his knuckles, until he reaches for the remote to turn it off.

 

And if he pays closer attention to Lewis’ races for the next few weeks, then so what.

It’s a cliché to meet a celebrity in London, everyone knows that. The thrill wore off for Nico almost immediately, because when you grow up in Monte Carlo you recognise every other person you see on the street, and of those you don’t half are probably just celebrities you’re not interested in, and okay, that’s not strictly true but it’s not _that_ far off. He just doesn’t think much of it if he spots Kate Moss on the tube or someone one of his flatmate assures him is in the new Batman movie in Hyde Park.

So when his flatmates invite him out for a meal and then insist they all walk back to the campus though Covent Garden – “because, oh my god, Jess from my Maths saw Jude Law in a restaurant there the other day!” – he just shrugs and agrees, walking along at the back of the group.

Someone falls into step with him. “I love London,” says Aarav, grinning at Nico. “The people, the places, the food. So different. I love the – the, ah, I don’t know the word –”

Nico smiles, pushing his hands into his pockets and stepping over a crack on the pavement. He likes Aarav: he’s been pushed by his parents to do Physics, has moved from India to do so, but he’s secretly taking Drama courses on the side. And he’s very enthusiastic about everything.

“Diversity,” Nico supplies, helpfully, and Aarav nods eagerly.

“Yes, that!”

And then, five minutes later, when the heavens have opened up and it’s, colloquially, pissing it down, he adds, “But I don’t like the weather.”

By the time they actually reach what can technically be called Covent Garden, they’re soaked to the bone, and Aarav’s lost some more of his characteristic enthusiasm. Nico’s given up his suit jacket to one of the girls, shivering in her short dress, because he was brought up to be polite and chivalrous; the rest of his male flatmates apparently haven’t, because they’re ignoring the other girls’ pleading stares.

Polite and chivalrous he may be, but he’s also wearing a white shirt that is now transparent. He’s plucking at the sodden cotton in despair when someone suddenly says, “Nico?”

It’s a voice that’s familiar and somehow not all at once and he glances up wildly, trying to figure out where it’s come from.

They’ve stopped outside one of those new restaurants that’s more cool than it is posh, trying for effortlessly cool but coming off a little try-hard. The girls are on their tiptoes, peering over the modern art sculptures that surround the entrance to see if they can spot anyone even vaguely famous; Aarav’s trying to act like he isn’t interested, but he keeps glancing up hopefully too. The rest of the boys are stood around complaining about the weather.

“Nico?” someone asks again, and Nico turns away from the entrance to look behind himself.

“Yes,” he says, tentatively. He doesn’t quite recognise the person in front of him for a second or two, and then he blinks the rainwater out of his eyes and it just _clicks_. “Lewis,” he says, blankly, and again, “Oh, Lewis?” this time a bit more confidently.

Lewis just grins at him, looking relieved, holding out his hand. “Thought it was you! Hey, man!”

It’s hard not to look at Lewis as Nico shakes his hand, the gesture feeling awkward, perfunctory. But it’s been years since Nico last saw Lewis properly, and longer still since he’s seen him in anything other than race overalls: the suit Lewis is wearing is charcoal grey and fitting and paired with an actual bowtie. Two years ago Lewis would’ve scoffed at someone in that getup; now he looks entirely comfortable in it, and Nico suddenly feels horribly inadequate in his damp shirt.

“What a coincidence, man! I was just leaving!” Lewis seems oblivious to Nico’s discomfort, punching him lightly on the arm. “Are you local?”

“I –” starts Nico, and has to break off to cough. He can hear his flatmates whispering too loudly behind him, one of the girls asking under her breath who _Nico’s talking to,_ and _is he famous_. “Yeah, I’ve been living here two years. At university, Imperial. I’m studying Aeronautics.”

“Oh, sure, of course!” Lewis nods, rubbing at his neck. “Forgot you were doing that. I’d never have gotten in. Think mum wanted me to go, but dad told me to carry on with the racing, and you don’t argue with that, right?” He laughs. Nico does too, barely.

They chat like that for ten minutes or so, Lewis getting increasingly enthusiastic, Nico progressively withdrawing in on himself. It’s bizarre – he’s usually vocal, if not the centre of attention, but he’s quiet now. He’s painfully aware of the difference between the two of them now, that they can no longer talk as equals, both competing for the same karting trophy or trying to outdo one another on their unicycles. It makes him reticent, and his contributions to the conversation are no more than a murmured observation or the occasional strained chuckle.

Lewis, for his part, doesn’t seem to notice. He’s perfectly happy to keep up his chatter, grinning and laughing that laugh of his.

After Lewis’ anecdote about a hotel he had to stay at in Melbourne tails off, it slowly dawns on Nico that he ought to say something. He doesn’t imagine Lewis will be interested in his own stories about broken projectors disrupting his Physics lectures.

“Congratulations on the wins,” he says finally, and to his own ears it sounds pathetic, but Lewis’ smile widens.

“Thanks, man!” he says, sincerely. “I can hardly believe them, when I crossed the –”

A girl appears at Lewis’ side, then, olive-skinned, gorgeous, wearing a tight green dress. She smiles politely at Nico before tapping Lewis’ chest with one immaculately manicured fingernail. “Lew, darling, you need to hurry up.”

“Yeah,” says Lewis, catching her wrist with his hand and sliding his fingers down until he can intertwine them with hers. It’s cute; Nico swallows and glances down at the floor, putting his hands back into his pockets. There’s a crack on the pavement between himself and Lewis. “I’ll be with you soon, babe. Just finishing up here. Give me five minutes.”

He hears her say, “Sure, I’ll wait in the car,” and a soft sound that might be him kissing her cheek or the other way around, and then the telltale _tap-tap_ of her heels against the pavement as she walks away.

Lewis is still smiling at Nico when he looks up again cautiously, but it looks apologetic now.  “Sorry, man, gotta run. Don’t want to keep the lady waiting!” he adds. “But look – give me your number and we’ll hang sometime. You get holidays, right? We’ll go out.”

He sounds confident, assured of it; Nico recites his number almost mindlessly, and so he watches Lewis type it into his phone in surprise. There’s the glint of gold from a ring on Lewis’ finger when he slides the phone back into his pocket, patting it once.

“I’ll give you a call,” Lewis reiterates, still with that smile. “So don’t go booking too much of a social life, huh, Nico?”

 

After Lewis has gone – Nico watches him leave, sees him climb into a black Rolls-Royce parked that appears silently from an alley beside the restaurant, and catches a glimpse of that same green-dressed woman as the door opens and shuts – he rejoins his friends, who seem intent on extracting as much information about Lewis from him as they can within the short time it takes them to walk back to campus.

It makes something lurch in Nico’s stomach, how interested they all are in who Lewis is and who he’s dating and how much he earns, and he tries to keep his answers as brief as possible. They get bored asking and go back to discussing whether or not that man sat in the corner of the restaurant was Justin Timberlake or not when it becomes apparent that Nico isn’t going to give much away, but not before Aarav can say this:

 “Imagine living like that,” he says, wistfully. “Easy job, easy money, pretty girls. Lucky.”

“Lucky,” repeats Nico, vacantly, and looks back down at the cracks in the pavement as he walks.

Lewis calls him in the middle of a lecture.

It’s not that Nico doesn’t expect Lewis to call, but – he doesn’t expect Lewis to call. _I’ll give you a call_ is something people say to be polite when they can’t think of anything else and don’t really want to make plans. Nico tries to ignore the fact that he’s started answering calls from unknown numbers. He’s now heard far too many automated advertisements and had to tell people they’ve gotten the wrong number more times than he can count.

So when his phone suddenly starts vibrating in his pocket during a particularly boring mechanics PowerPoint, and he pulls it out to see a call from an unknown number, he pretends like his heart doesn’t immediately leap into his throat, mostly because he’s not entirely sure _why_. It doesn’t stop him from quietly sliding his notebook into his bag and sidling out of the door, grateful that he both chose a seat near the back and that it’s dark. The sound of his lecturer monotonously reciting algorithms fades out as he silently closes the door behind him.

He stares at the phone in his hand for a second once he’s outside in the corridor, squinting a little in the sudden light, and then shakes himself mentally and answers it before it can stop ringing.

“Hi,” he says, bracing himself for that irritating, _Are you looking to buy a new -_

“Nico. Hey, man,” says Lewis, and Nico stops mentally reciting double-glazing adverts because he’s suddenly surprised and breathless and completely underwhelmed all at once, because, _hey, man_ , who even says that. “You’re not busy?”

Nico turns his head, glancing back into the lecture hall through the glass window pane of the door. The lights are back on, the lecturer stood up and talking again, probably giving them information that will turn out to be vitally important for his final exams in just a few weeks, but Nico finds himself shaking his head anyway. “No,” he says, once he realises Lewis can’t see him, and hoists his rucksack a little higher up his shoulder. “No, I’m not. I mean – I can talk, yeah.”

“Cool,” says Lewis, sincerely. “Listen, I’ve been meaning to call, I’ve just been...you know.”

Nico nods again, even though it’s not like he does know, not really. Keke’s told him a little about his life during his racing days (probably less than people would expect, Nico thinks, sometimes) but he doubts that there’s quite so much drinking or chain-smoking or that there are quite so any unsupervised parties with people who aren’t sponsors at McLaren nowadays.

Then again, like he said, it’s not like he’d _know_.

“Yeah,” Nico says, listlessly, and his voice when he adds, “Can’t you get Vodafone to install a phone in your car and call during races?” is maybe a little flat, nervous, but Lewis doesn’t seem to notice if it is.

He laughs. “I wish! Ah, man, Nico – it was cool seeing you last week. Really cool. It’s been years!”

It was two weeks ago, actually, but Lewis’ lifestyle doesn’t involve having to remember essay deadlines or seminar timings like Nico’s does, so the days probably just blend into one another for him.  It’s not as if it matters much. “Yes. 2005, I think?”  says Nico, frowning a little as he thinks. “Just after you won Formula Three.”

“Yeah, yeah, something like that,” says Lewis, vaguely, and then his voice brightens up. “Back when you still had long hair, right! Thank god you got rid of that, huh? Guess you’d have had to if you’d stuck it out driving, you don’t see Alonso or Schumacher with princess locks...”

Nico feels his face heat up a little, cheeks reddening a little. Rationally he knows it’s stupid to get embarrassed over a throwaway comment like that. It’s just an aside, thrown in because Lewis is rambling inanely now, the way he always has or at least always used to: saying things that could probably be insulting but it’s easier just to brush off, jokes that fall a little flat but that Nico used to crack a smile at anyway, because apparently he thought it was worth pretending just to see a similar, genuine smile light up Lewis’ face. (He’d never really understood why that was.) Now, though, Nico’s barely listening to him. He runs his free hand through his – thankfully short – hair self-consciously before dropping it down to rest on his other arm, wringing the fabric of his sleeve nervously. It’s not as if Lewis can see him, calling him from wherever he is halfway across the world, but Nico hunches his shoulders a little anyway, turning away to the wall.

By the time he’s willed a little of the (ridiculous, completely unnecessary, because he’d _liked_ his hair) embarrassment away, he can only catch the tail end of what Lewis is saying.

“- maybe see you?”

“What?”

“Is that okay?”

“I don’t –” Nico flounders for a second before laughing nervously. “Sorry. I missed the end of what you were saying. The phone signal, you know. It’s not...good.”

Lewis laughs at that. “Britain, huh?” he says, amused. “We’ve never been good with technology, we leave that to you German lot. I just asked if you’re coming to France. Come watch the Grand Prix, we could go out before. Figured Keke could get you in at McLaren, right?”

Keke can. He has before, there and Williams, so Nico’s familiar with skulking around in the back of garages, meekly obeying the orders of whichever publicist has been sent to deal with him and the other guests: don’t touch anything, stay out of the way of the cameras and the engineers and the mechanics, watch the race on the monitors, don’t so much as talk to the drivers. _Stay right where you are_ , they may as well say, but maybe it’ll be different this time if he’s there for Lewis. He’d never known Raikkonen or Coulthard or Montoya well enough to get the privileges that entailed.

But he tells Lewis yes, he can, and doesn’t know if the note of happiness he picks up in Lewis’ voice during the rest of the conversation they have, until Lewis hangs up, is a figment of his imagination.

 

There’s a reason France can’t come fast enough for him and it’s that he hasn’t been to a Grand Prix since Monaco last year. That’s what Nico tells himself, anyway.

 

He flies out late on the Friday night. He’d have liked to have seen free practice, but his exams are too close to justify spending a day watching cars drive around just to make some meaningless numbers appear on a screen or minimally adjust the tyre pressure. But there are butterflies in his stomach as he sits at his desk in London, reading over notes on biological fluid mechanics and watching the repetitive motion of the cars around the track on the television, both soothing and exciting in its familiarity, and they haven’t gone away by the time he steps onto French tarmac fourteen hours later.

He spends a restless night in a French hotel close to the circuit, having been shown to his room by a sleepy-eyed teenage porter who looks irritated at Nico’s checking in so late, and barely sleeps a wink. But he’s wide awake when the clock finally ticks over to an acceptable time to be at the track.

There’s an odd sense of trepidation that sits in his stomach during the short taxi ride to the circuit. It’s absurd: he’s been to dozens of races before, remembers sitting in the paddock at barely school-age, too big earphones slipping off his head, tugging at Keke’s sleeve nervously. Until a few years ago rows of garages and crowded pit lanes were almost a second home; now the idea of the makes his head spin.

It’s reassuring that the Formula One circus turns out to be just as Nico remembers it: overwhelming, extravagant, intimidating, and yet somehow still the greatest thing on earth.

He’s early to arrive, despite his self-imposed delay, and the security guard at the paddock entrance gives him an odd look and his watch a cursory glance before letting him through. Spectators are already numbering in the thousands, but there are only mechanics and engineers scurrying about in the garages, all the drivers, celebrities and other non-race personnel still in their hotels or cooped up in the motorhomes.

 

Lewis tops Q1 by a country mile. Q2 is similarly easy for him, the time he clocks up nothing short of spectacular for a qualifying session, and when he’s wheeled back into the garage Nico steps forward to congratulate him.

But Lewis doesn’t bound out of the car or high-five the nearest mechanic. He steps calmly out, removing his gloves first and foremost and laying them on a nearby chair. His helmet is next, but he holds onto that, tucking it under his arm.

“That was –” Nico starts, once Lewis has removed his balaclava too, but he can’t seem to find the right word in English or Italian or Spanish or any of the languages he speaks just as well as German. There’s nothing to convey the sense of awe, the enormity of what he’s just witnessed, because Lewis is another person racing altogether as he is out of it and Nico hasn’t seen someone work agility and speed like that out of a car in months.

“Yeah?” says Lewis, distractedly, even though Nico hasn’t finished his sentence.

He’s not really paying attention; he gives Nico a slightly haphazard, harried smile, and it’s genuine but he’s really focusing on the stats rapidly flashing up on the screens around the garage and the mechanics diving on his car. There’s a hard look in his eyes that’s somewhere between steely determination and the most heartfelt aching hope.

It’s been years since Nico has been so invested in something that, so wholly consumed by the desire to do something and to do it _well_ and be the best and all those other phrases you hear in press conferences that everyone assumes the drivers don’t mean, except sometimes they really do.  He likes his university course, of course he does, but not to the extent that Lewis seems to love his racing. If something so ultimately insignificant as how many metres up the asphalt you are when you press the pedal down can inspire that focus in him, Nico can’t even begin to imagine how Lewis will be tomorrow.

And he suddenly finds himself aching for that raw, unabashed desire again.

The raw, unabashed desire to do well that makes you overtake the two in front of you and increase your speed on that last straight incrementally and risk an extra tenth of a second on the brakes on the penultimate corner, because you won’t be able to look yourself in the eye if you don’t at least _try_.

He might be able to return to the paddock years later, but he doesn’t know if he’ll ever get that determination and focus back. Would he still have it if – if he was the one in the red and white overalls trying to get along with Alonso?

“Yeah,” concedes Nico, when it becomes apparent that a sufficient word isn’t going to come to him and Lewis wouldn’t much care if it did. He feels breathless.

Someone calls for Lewis then, asking him to come explain the slight understeer on Turn 15 because they can’t account for it, and Lewis turns briefly towards them. He pushes his helmet towards Nico – “Take this,” he says, succinctly – and then weaves his way across the garage to the puzzled engineer.

The helmet is a heavy weight in Nico’s hands, although he knows that in reality it weighs little. He steps backwards, out of the way of the ongoing stream of people so that he can hold it more reverentially, resting either side on his open palms. The yellow surface is warm to the touch, and Nico’s suddenly stuck with the startling revelation that this carbon-fibre shell he can hold so easily could be the only thing keeping Lewis alive tomorrow if it all goes wrong. It’s a thought that makes him shiver, and he disregards it in favour of tracing the outline of the design with one fingertip, the orange lines, and the yellow band across the top, the tiny Johnnie Walker figurine that strides confidently across the side.

Someone coughs. “I’ll take that, please,” interrupts a mechanic in a McLaren shirt, and Nico hands it over sheepishly. He’s aware of a gentle blush spreading across his cheeks.

He feels a little lost without it, and he shoves his hands in his pockets to keep from fidgeting. He keeps them there during Q3, crossing his fingers as Lewis sets out on his last time lap, and his nails dig into his palm when Lewis loses out on pole to Massa by just seven-tenths of a second.

 

He barely sees Lewis after that. First he’s preoccupied by media and sponsor duties, and then there’s a meeting with Ron Dennis, and then he’s requisitioned by his trainer for the rest of the evening. Nico hangs around the McLaren garage and motorhome for a few hours after qualifying, but it’s in vain, and when the mechanics start to look at him pityingly he gives up and leaves.

But he gets a text from Lewis just as he arrives back at the hotel, _sorry about 2day! thanks for being here, dinner tomorrow @_ 7? _i’ll pick you up_ is all it says, and Nico doesn’t hesitate before replying with _sounds good_.

 

Lewis doesn’t win the race but he does get on the podium. From the grin on his face when he rolls up outside Nico’s hotel you’d think it was the former, though.

“Hey,” he says, pushing up his shades, after Nico has climbed into the ridiculously unsubtle Ferrari he’s turned up in. “You should’ve called me, man, I could’ve gotten you a room in the drivers’ hotel.”

Nico pulls the door shut behind himself, fervently praying that it doesn’t scrape the kerb. “Student budget,” he says, shamefacedly, and Lewis laughs, dropping his shades again.

“I could’ve hooked you up.”

Nico shrugs, already feeling uncomfortable, wanting to drop the subject. He doesn’t want Lewis to offer him things like that; he’s capable of paying his own way, and he’s already agonising over the idea of Lewis not letting them split the bill later. “It’s only for two nights.”

“I guess,” Lewis says, revving the engine – and that’s when it occurs to Nico.

“Don’t you have a driver?”

“Yeah.”

“But you’re driving?”

Lewis glances across at him, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “No shit Sherlock,” he says, one of those odd phrases he’d always liked. “I know a place. Wanted it to just be us two, you know, like old times. Plus I get to drive this baby.” He pats the dashboard lovingly.

It gets better out of that. Nico gently takes the piss out of him for driving a car made by a rival team, because Ferrari, really, is he trying to throw a hint to Domenicali or something, and Lewis makes indignant noises and elbows him in the ribs at a traffic light, insisting on things like _pedigree_ and _boyhood dream car_. It’s an easy repertoire; they fall back into what Nico reluctantly terms ‘banter’ almost like they’ve never been apart, and he’s almost disappointed when they finally reach the restaurant and the conversation has to stop.

Only for a few minutes, though, because the restaurant is lovely.

It’s not big but it’s tasteful, and there are Renaissance prints on the wall and a real hearth is roaring away in the corner, bathing all the diners in a warm glow. The low murmur of conversation that greets them as they approach the entrance is a blend of French, Italian, what he thinks might be Catalan, even some lilting Greek.

Lewis’ voice, with its accent, seems out of place when he speaks to the maitre d'.

But they’re shown to a secluded table in the corner and the maitre d' has a charming smile when he returns with their menus, and scanning down the list Nico has to admit that Lewis has chosen well.  Lewis had never particularly been into his food when they were younger, preferring to order a burger and chips or something equally bland whenever they stopped for a late dinner on their way back from karting races or in a hotel canteen. He hadn’t even known how to use chopsticks; Nico remembers teaching him.

He glances over the top of the menu to find Lewis looking at him sheepishly, leaning forward a little.

“It’s all in French,” he stage-whispers, and Nico looks down at the menu again in surprise. He barely notices switching between the languages he’s fluent in nowadays because he doesn’t have to stop and think about it, the words just naturally falling off his tongue or flickering before his eyes.

“Yes,” Nico murmurs back, smiling. “Would you like me to order for you?”

“Save me from that embarrassment,” Lewis says, gratefully, and then a few minutes later, hastily, “Just don’t get snails!” And he’s even polite enough not to even ask what Nico’s ordered for him until after the maitre d' has left, though he does look on admiringly at the way Nico’s mouth forms perfectly around the syllables of the delicate French words. Nico ducks his head to hide the blush on his cheeks when he sees Lewis’ gaze on his lips.

Lewis doesn’t look quite relaxed until their meals turn up and there’s not a snail in sight, just _steak au poivre_ , though.

 

The conversation between the two of them flows easily again, following a brief, playful argument over which wine they ought to choose; Nico wants a white and Lewis wants a red, and eventually Lewis just waves over a waiter and orders both.

But it’s still a surprise when they’re talking about karting, reminiscing about a time they both managed to crash at the exact same corner and then had to chase their rolling cars down a slope, and Lewis says –

 “Honestly? You always kind of intimidated me, man,” and the grin is still on his face from their earlier conversation but he still sounds sincere. “I always looked up to you, you know. Even when we were –” He stretches a hand out to the side, palm flat, indicating an approximate height.

A waiter comes bustling past laden down with trays and looks down his nose at Lewis, blocking his path. Lewis retracts his hand sheepishly and lifts it to tug at his collar a little instead. “So,” he says, with a half-aborted shrug. “I just thought you ought to know. You kind of still do, to be honest. Er, Nico?”

Nico’s just staring at him, bemused.

The man sat across the table from him picking at the remains of a plate of profiteroles is still the reigning GP2 world champion and scraped P3 in his first ever Formula One race and is one race away from matching the record for the most podium finishes in a rookie season. Nico’s still a year away from even getting three measly little letters, BSc, after his name.

“I – intimidated?”

Lewis laughs awkwardly, reaching around to scrub at the back of his neck with a hand. “Don’t make me say it again, man.”

“But why would I intimidate you?” Nico knows he’s probably making it awkward, but he can’t get over the notion. Him intimidating Lewis.

“How can you - you speak _five_ languages,” says Lewis, incredulously. “You grew up in Monaco and you knew all these famous people. You could unicycle. And your dad was Keke Rosberg. Keke Rosberg, like, the world champion – my dad was an IT manager. And you were _quick_.”

 

For some reason, the last part is what sticks in Nico’s head.

 _You were quick_ , in that awed, painfully genuine tone of Lewis’, and for a second it’s almost like they’re fourteen again and Lewis is jealous because Nico’s pulled an overtaking manoeuvre that he could only dream of.

But, he hastily reminds himself, how fast or slow he was doesn’t matter anymore.

 

Britain loves Lewis.

Nico doesn’t go to the race, because two of his old school friends are getting married in Monaco on the Sunday and he’s been roped into both the reception and the stag do. He does manage to catch the tail end of qualifying when he’s in his parents’ apartment,  lured over by the promise of his mother’s cooking for Saturday lunch – Keke’s watching it on the flatscreen in the front room, and he motions at Nico to sit down.

It’s predictable: the McLarens are vying for pole, each upping one another by a few seconds at a time. Lewis is in fourth, separated by a fair distance, and it all looks concrete enough by the last few minutes of Q3 that Nico feels justified in glancing down at his phone, starting to type out a text when –

“And that is – that is _unbelievable!_ Unbelievable! Ladies and gentlemen, that is Hamilton, Britain’s own Lewis Hamilton on pole for the 2007 Silverstone Grand Prix! Stolen from right under Raikkonen’s nose! For the first time since 1996, we have a British polesitter at the British Grand Prix. Incredible.”

Nico glances up as quickly as he can, but the camera’s already cut away from Lewis to the crowds.

The whole circuit is awash with red, white and blue. Everywhere Nico looks there’s a flag or a t-shirt or a banner with a message that people think is original. There are four men are pulling their shirts up to show off messily painted letters spelling out LEWIS – the last one has both the I and the S – on their stomachs, fist pumping, and a small boy in full McLaren getup is jumping up and down, grinning at his dad, and there’s a teenage girl has tears running down her cheeks, smudging the Union Jack facepaint she’s wearing, waving frantically when she notices the camera pointed at her. It’s somehow exactly like and not at all like the tifosi – and almost as if on cue, there’s a shot of one lonely Ferrari fan, looking subdued.

Keke mutters something derisive in Finnish and turns the television off.

“Hey...” says Nico, half-heartedly.

“It is not as if he won the race,” Keke says, switching to German. “Pole means nothing at Silverstone, Nico.”

“You got pole, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” says Keke, and he sounds a little affronted. Nico tries not to laugh again. “And I did not win, so you see. I tell you they only cheer because he is British. Raikkonen will win.”

“You would say that,” Nico says. “You’re as bad as them!”

Keke cuffs him round the head and mutters something about national pride when they both stand up, Sina calling them through to come eat, the food’s getting cold.

 

But he finds himself thinking about it later, Lewis as the polesitter at his home Grand Prix. Nico can’t even begin to imagine how that feels, not least because he isn’t entirely sure what his home Grand Prix would be. Nürburgring, he supposes but - it’s not as if Germany _needs_ another driver. They’ve got Heidfeld and Glock and Sutil and really, the Schumachers still, because that’s a legacy that isn’t going to go away any time soon, and there’s a new boy they’re calling Baby Schumi. He’d mostly raced under the German flag in karting, but back then, when the World Champion was guaranteed to have black, red and yellow stripes next to their name, it didn’t hurt to have them next to yours too.

Raikkonen’s enough for Finland. They barely need Kovalainen as it is. Of course, Keke’d have had him race under the Finnish flag, because that’s what Rosbergs do. He remembers Mika Hakkinen being in their house years ago and stooping down to talk to him, because he was barely seven or eight, smiling at him and saying something in a language he couldn’t understand, and wanting to cry because here was a real life Formula One driver and he wasn’t even clever enough to understand what he was saying. It’d be difficult to justify driving for a country he doesn’t even speak the language of – they wouldn’t want him.

So Monaco. He tries to imagine himself there, because he’s unintentionally driven the circuit countless times in road cars. There’s something gently ironic about turning into La Rascasse, knowing that sometimes this corner is make-or-break for a lap time, when all he’s trying to do is get to his dentist’s appointment on time. But he’s not truly Monegasque, not in the strictest sense of the term, and it’s that legal element of all things that would have him hesitate before racing under that red and white flag.

Besides, he knows from experience that he’d regret whichever he chose.

 

Trying to fit in the Grand Prixs around his studies isn’t always easy, but then the two-month holiday of August and September comes around and suddenly it is. Some races still aren’t practical; flying out to Japan for a day wouldn’t work, but he can make some of the European ones. If Keke or McLaren are surprised by his sudden flurry of interest in paddock passes then neither of them comment.

Predictably, though, the press do.

Nico doesn’t think of himself as famous, because he isn’t. His surname and his heritage can arouse a certain element of interest in very specific groups and countries, but his father is barely a household name in the way his peers are and so Nico is virtually anonymous to anyone who wasn’t especially interested in karting championships during the late nineties. But people have started to recognise him as being in the McLaren garage – one Super Aguri press officer even asks him in Hungary if he’s Hamilton’s PA, she didn’t know he was hiring, and Lewis laughs for a good ten minutes when Nico tells him.

It doesn’t help that Lewis runs to him in Italy after the race, ignoring the grasping hands of his mechanics and pulling Nico into a hug, seeking comfort after the puncture left him out of contention for the top step of the podium. The pictures are all over the internet, originally with captions like _Lewis Hamilton and friend after ‘disappointing’ second place in Monza¸_ and then, after someone identifies him, _Son of champion Rosberg only solace for Hamilton after puncture wrecks his race_.

Nico doesn’t become an overnight sensation or get recognised in the street, but he does have to refrain from Googling himself once the comments about him stop being vague and start focusing on his success in junior formulae (nice, positive, but probably conducive to a big ego), the fact that he’s only there because of his dad (mildly offensive, but nothing he hasn’t heard before) and his personal life (invasive and insulting, primarily). There are also a worryingly high number of people speculating on his and Lewis’ relationship, and those – those he ignores for a multitude of reasons he doesn’t want to think about.

There’s also a few calls from media organisations keen for a quote about his opinion on Lewis and Fernando’s rivalry or his view of Lewis as a person, but he hangs those up.

He avoids confronting the media at all until there’s suddenly a microphone shoved in his face during the grid walk at Spa, and Nico jerks backwards, very nearly tripping over a stray cable near a Honda.

The reporter holding the microphone says, “Sorry,” carelessly, dismissively, and the cameraman sniggers a little. Nico feels himself flush, embarrassed. He tries to push past the microphone, murmuring a faint apology.

“No, wait!” the reporter says, pressing in closer. “You – you’re Rosberg’s son? Keke Rosberg?”

Nico glances up the grid. Lewis is stood by the side of his car, barely visible through the throng of reporters and film crews surrounding him. He’s wearing sunglasses and his race overalls are tied loosely around his waist, and he looks perfectly comfortable laughing along at something Martin Brundle has just said to him, elbowing one of his mechanics in the ribs and saying something that makes the rest of the reporters laugh too. He makes it look natural, makes it look like it’s the easiest thing in the world to do, to open up to faceless cameras and translate his thoughts to millions of people across the world.

The solitary camera in front of Nico stares at him unwaveringly.

He swallows hard and shakes his head, looking back up at the reporter.  He tries to ignore the chatter around him. “I – yes.”

 “Thank fuck,” mumbles the cameraman, under his breath, as he hoists the camera a little higher and steps closer to Nico. A small light appears on it. The reporter shoots him a knowing, amused look.

“So, Rosberg Junior,” he starts, and this is clearly his friendly television voice. “We’re here with the son of Keke Rosberg, the 1982 world champion. We’ve seen you a lot around the McLaren garage lately – Lewis Hamilton’s side of it, if you haven’t spotted him.”

Nico stares at him. He has no idea if he’s supposed to respond to that or not; he doesn’t do this.

The reporter, out of shot, rolls his eyes but continues. “Any reason? Looking for a test drive? You’re a bit old to be a rookie, after all.”

“I’m just here to support Lewis,” Nico says, finally finding his voice, although the words taste odd in his mouth.  “I – we’ve known each other since we were kids. We’re old karting teammates.”

“Support Lewis,” the reporter echoes, his words tinged with something suggestive, and Nico feels his face heat up. It’s a bad trick; the viewers can’t see the reporter, but they can see Nico’s embarrassment at the suggestion, and rumours abound in Formula One.

“We’re good friends,” Nico grits out. “Like I said, we’re old karting teammates. That’s a long time to know each other.”

“Of course,” says the reporter, sagely, and then launches into another inane question about what _exactly_ is Lewis’ personality off the track, Nico, could you be so kind as to enlighten us?

 

When the reporter finally leaves, more than ten minutes later, Nico feels like he’s going to be sick.

If drivers’ fame means this he isn’t sure he could do it.

“What’s this about you being on TV?” Lewis asks, as soon as he walks into the hotel room, swinging himself over the back of one of the sofas and falling onto the cushions in an ungraceful heap. One of the expensive cushions falls onto the carpet. “Stealing my limelight, Rosberg?”

Nico looks up from his phone quickly. “No! I couldn’t get the reporter to leave, he kept asking me about you, I –”

 “Relax!” Lewis says, and he’s laughing a little disbelieving. He stretches legs out along the sofa and holds his hands up in mock-surrender. “Seriously, Nico. It’s no big deal. Besides, heard you were only saying nice things about me.”

The cushion from the floor hits him a few seconds later.

“Old karting teammate, huh?”

That does make Nico look up. Lewis is looking at him with an unreadable expression, a look that could either be carefully blank or genuinely disinterested, and Nico finds he can’t tell the difference between the two. He doesn’t like that.

“Well, we are,” he says, by way of explanation. “Seven years ago. What else was I supposed to tell them we were?”

There’s the briefest moment where they lock eyes, and Nico swears there’s something dark in Lewis’ eyes, but then they’re crinkling up as he smiles. “You’re supposed to say you’re a fan of me, the greatest Formula One driver since Ayrton Senna,” Lewis informs him, mock-seriously, and then starts laughing when Nico bends to pick up the cushion and retaliate.

One of the boys on his course rings him in mid-October – and Nico feels guilty as soon as he sees the number flash up on his phone, because he hasn’t seen the boy, Patrick, since before the start of exams all those long months ago, and he’d promised that they’d meet up – and says, in a hushed tone, “You know you’re in The Times, right?”

“What?”

“You’re in The Times!” repeats Patrick, in unabashed awe. “Your name. Lewis Hamilton’s talking about you – you know, _the_ Lewis Hamilton. You didn’t tell us you knew him!”

There’s a lot of stuff Nico doesn’t tell people. He hangs up on Patrick as quickly as possible without seeming rude, which means pretending to listen during a truly terrible anecdote about his youngest cousin and a suspicious Halloween costume, and then as soon he’s gone he’s grabbing his laptop and signing onto The Times section.

It could’ve plausibly been just an offhand mention; he didn’t think to ask Patrick.

It’s not.

> **R** : Lewis, there was some controversy when McLaren announced your signing all those months ago, a lot of people saying you were too young or too inexperienced to debut at a top-level team. You’ve now of course proved them wrong by being in the running for the championship in the last race of your rookie season, but you can see their point. You were joining a tea many people only come to after a Championship win, that’s got to mean a lot to you, that they and Ron Dennis had this confidence in you.
> 
> **H:** Absolutely, absolutely, McLaren’s obviously got this amazing driver history, you can really only compare it to Ferrari in those terms, and to become a part of that...incredible.
> 
> **R:** When you see those names, Prost, Lauda, Senna, Hunt, Hakkinen, Fittipaldi, it must –
> 
> **H:** Don’t forget [Keke] Rosberg, man!  I’ve actually been hanging around with [Keke’s son] Nico recently, we’ve known each other since we were kids, so I don’t think I’m allowed to let you get away with not mentioning Keke.
> 
> **R:** Of course, though technically he didn’t actually win his Championship with McLaren. Does Nico still race?
> 
> **H:** I think he decided they only needed one World Champion in the family! [laughs] No, not that I know of, but he definitely could’ve. Lucky for me that he decided not to go into Formula One, he was seriously fast.
> 
> **R:** And you’re definitely not just saying that in case he reads this?
> 
> **H:** Hi, Nico! [laughs] No, no, not at all, overtaking’s my thing but Nico had me just in pace every time. Every time in karting. All I’m saying is that if he’d come into Formula 1 when I did – let’s just say you might not be talking to me as a potential Champion right now!

There’s a lump in Nico’s throat by the time he reaches the end. His eyes scan through quickly for any more mentions of his name but there are none, and it’s with a heavy heart that he closes his laptop.

A potential champion, is how Lewis has just described him. Someone capable of that feat in the same way Schumacher was seven times and Senna should have been more than just his three.

The worst part is that he knows Lewis means it. Lewis might joke around but he’s painfully sincere at times, can be egotistical but is equally praiseworthy of his rivals and those who might grow into rivals – and he always means well, but here, to Nico, his words can only mean one thing: that he made the wrong choice when he turned down GP2 for a laboratory in London. Lewis’ words here are the closest anyone’s ever come to confirming that suspicion.

He doesn’t bring the article up to Lewis and neither does Lewis to him and well, it’s probably best it stays that way.

Going to the Brazil Grand Prix is a risk. He flies out on the Thursday to have the whole weekend, although he’s technically supposed to be in uni right now; he sits on the plane mentally working out which lecture he’d be in as they depart Heathrow, as they skim over northern Africa, as they’re above the deep oceans. It’s dark when the plane lands.

But somehow missing a lecture or two seems perfectly justified when Lewis could take the title in the last race of his rookie season. This isn’t something he can miss.

That, and he’d skip all of his seminars if he meant he could see the smile that appears on Lewis’ face when he sees Nico in the garage on Friday morning just one more time.

 

It’s the last time Nico sees him properly smile all weekend.

First there’s the issue with him using one too many sets of wet tyres during practice, and then there’s the P2 in qualifying, which is hardly bad but when you’re fighting for the championship in the last race of the season starting on the clean or dirty side can be everything, and if that’s true Lewis has just lost everything.

The race isn’t much better. Nico worries his lip between his teeth as he watches the formation lap and bites down hard enough to make it bleed when Lewis’ brakes lock up barely four corners in and he’s off the track. Someone in the garage curses out Alonso under their breath, and for once nobody disagrees. Then there’s the computer failure and the necessary switch to a three-stop strategy and  the timer clocking him at more than a minute behind Raikkonen, and it all adds up to P7 and Lewis walking dejectedly back to the garage from parc ferme, his championship hopes in tatters.

(And for one sick, twisted moment, Nico’s glad – because at least that’s not another thing between the two of them, at least that’s not another thing Lewis has over on him. Neither of them has a championship.

He’s disgusted with himself as soon as Lewis takes his helmet off and he sees the look on his face.)

 

Usually after a race there’s a cursory roundup of the media, and there’s still a little of that, but the team seems to understand that Lewis isn’t really in a state to make great public announcements right now – and besides, the press seems too preoccupied in trying to coax more than monosyllabic answers out of their new reigning world champion to care about the rookie who came in second overall, no matter how much more impressive that is. Nobody seems to give a shit that it took Kimi six years of practice to earn that one point that’ll have him marked down in the history books as better than Lewis and the rest in this season; that’s deemed irrelevant in favour of mathematical logic, and that’s bullshit. Talent should be rewarded, and the fact that just two bad races for Lewis could wipe out all he’d earned through a season of hard work and consistency makes Nico’s blood boil.

That’s what he goes to Lewis’ motorhome with the intention of saying, at least.

All notion of that goes out the window when Lewis opens the door with red-rimmed eyes, meets Nico’s eyes for a second that is long enough to convey the despair and dejection and sheer disappointment present there, and pulls Nico in to kiss him.  

And Nico’d be lying if he says it surprises him.

It’s what Lewis needs. His mouth brushes over the corner of Nico’s mouth once or twice, cautiously, tentatively, but then Nico reaches up to splay his hand against Lewis’ chest, fingers spread, and it’s like that touch releases Lewis. Suddenly his mouth is open under Nico’s and his hands are gripping Nico’s hips hard enough to bruise, like he’s scared if he loosens his hold on Nico like he did on the championship he’ll see the same result again, and he keeps gasping into Nico’s mouth, a ragged, shaky sound.

He’s still wearing his race overalls, tugged down to his waist, the sweat-soaked Nomex underneath drying sticky under Nico’s fingers. He’s shivering or maybe it’s shaking, from adrenaline or panic, and he smooths a soothing hand across the flat plane of Lewis’ stomach in a gentle attempt to quell him.

It works. Lewis calms little by little, in what could be seconds or minutes or hours for all Nico knows, but eventually they’re kissing properly. Chastely, still, but Lewis’ mouth is moving slowly against his own and Nico hears himself make a soft little pleased noise when Lewis presses his tongue into his mouth.

He closes his eyes. Like this he can almost pretend they’re on the podium, the sounds of the crowds outside still filtering through the thin walls like the ersatz cheering of the fans below, the dampness and the smell on Lewis’ skin champagne: a kiss provoked by sheer joy and ecstasy rather than the heavy weight of disappointment and utter devastation. In his mind he and Nico have maybe both just finished 1-2 for McLaren, Lewis taking the championship, or maybe it’s him – perhaps he and Lewis are rivals, star-crossed lovers, and it’s him who’s just won the championship, the kiss to Lewis a consolation prize. They could both happen in this fantasy of his.

It takes Lewis pulling away with a choked noise to break Nico out of his reverie, and guilt settles in his stomach when he remembers why he’s really here.

 “That wasn’t –” Lewis is saying, his voice cracking. “I’m not only doing this because of  - this isn’t because of today, it’s not, Nico –”

“I know,” Nico says, softly, and swallows hard because it wasn’t about today for him either. (Maybe it’s about the whole season, maybe it’s about taking a little of someone who has what he doesn’t but that, that requires a whole new thought process that can wait for another day.) “I know it isn’t.”

And he kisses Lewis again.

 

It’s surprising how little that kiss changes things.

But then again, Nico supposes, it’d just felt like a natural continuation of their relationship up until that point. There’d never been  a startling revelation for him where he’d suddenly realised that Lewis was what he wanted and gone after him, much like there’d never been a day where he’d woken up to realise that he didn’t want to race cars anymore.

He can only hope that he made the right decision on both counts.

Two weeks after the end of the season, two weeks that Nico spends focusing hard on his classwork so that he doesn’t have to think about anything else, two weeks that Lewis spends giving quotes like, “I honestly can't say I'm really gutted. I finished second in the world championship. I beat my team-mate under extremely difficult circumstances. I beat the two-time world champion. That was the goal,” which Nico isn’t sure if he should believe or not, Lewis texts him to ask for his address. Nico’s back home in Monaco for the winter holidays, and so that’s the address he gives Lewis, who hadn’t specified if he wanted London or Monte Carlo.

Lewis turns up at his door less than six hours later, but he kisses Nico so quickly when the door opens that it’s a whole fifteen minutes before Nico finally gets to break away, mouth wet, and say, “Hi,” breathlessly.

(When people ask him how he spent the winter break when gets back to university, he’ll shrug self-deprecatingly and tell them he didn’t do much. Stayed at home, mostly. What he won’t tell them is this: he spent November in his Monaco apartment with Lewis Hamilton talking about everything but racing. He woke up in the mornings to Lewis stood beside their bed in his sweaty workout gear, saying, “Morning, sleepyhead,” and laughing when Nico groaned and buried his head under the pillows, and the afternoons just lounging around watching television and going out for meals and trying to teach Lewis conversational French to no avail, and the evenings arching up under Lewis’ hands and mouth on his bed, groaning out Lewis’ name and kissing him afterwards when they’re both tired and sated.

He won’t tell them about the way Lewis stopped him from opening his front door on their last day together to press him against it and kiss him, slowly, fingers curling painfully tight in Nico’s hair when his bag slips down from his wrist to his elbow, jolting his arm, and that Nico couldn’t bring himself to care. The way he sighed into Lewis’ mouth and tried to press closer, tried to put as little space between them as possible because soon they’ll be countries apart again.  The bitter little laugh Lewis lets out before saying, “We can’t. Not at the airport. Guess this is a goodbye one, huh?”

But most of all he won’t tell anyone, not even Lewis, that he spent November learning to separate Lewis and racing, because here, in this, they’re equals.)

 

He drops Lewis off at the airport in Nice at an absurdly early time in the morning. Their goodbye there is perfunctory, polite, a quick hug and a handshake, but after they’ve stepped apart Nico traces his lips with the tip of his tongue just to see Lewis flush a little. He wishes he could kiss Lewis goodbye here, too, but then a teenage boy nearby suddenly hisses, “Hey, isn’t that Lewis Hamilton?” to his friend and it’s a painful reminder of exactly why they can’t.

There’s something hollow in his heart as he watches Lewis walk away.

He drives back to Monaco alone and in silence, turning off the radio when he realises that Lewis has left one of his ridiculous rap CDs in the player. The streets are very nearly empty, because it’s cold outside, very nearly December, and it’s closer to the time people would wake up than the time they’d go to sleep.

There are quicker ways back to his apartment, shortcuts and sideroads, but something in Nico stops him from taking those – and he realises with something akin to frustration that he’s deliberately following the path of the Grand Prix circuit. He’d done it without even realising, so natural and intrinsic within him when in fact it should be anything but.

It’s that realisation that makes him slow in front of the tunnel, taking a moment to allow himself to close his eyes and collect himself. _Breathe_ , he thinks. _Stop doing this to yourself. Stop thinking this is what you want. You’re not Lewis –_

\- but when he opens them again he can feel the pressure of a helmet against his neck, the too-tight straps and buckles digging into his shoulders, the gentle vibrations and low hum of the engine behind his seat, the _whoosh_ of the wind around him –

\- and he just thinks, _let me do this one more time._

He puts his foot down.

The car roars into life, all eight cylinders of the Mercedes engine sparking at once, and he’s exceeding the speed limit before he’s even reached the tunnel entrance. The lights of the tunnel whip past in one solid blur, _onetwothreefourfive_ until he can’t count them individually anymore, forming a stark white line splitting the dark walls in his peripheral vision. There’s the howl of the engine echoing back through the air and filling all the space, a brutish but somehow beautiful sound – and it’s like he’s simultaneously one with the car and the road, inseparable, indivisible, his heartbeat in sync with the thrum of the cylinders as if he’s just one organic part of something so much bigger; and yet somehow so distant, watching this odd juxtaposition of flesh and metal through someone else’s eyes, his mind blank. It’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t feel entirely natural, not in a way it once did.

He brakes.

And that’s when he knows that this could never have been him. He could never have done what Lewis does now; he could never race this circuit and win, stand on that top step of the podium with eyes turned to the heavens and the heavy weight of a trophy in his hands. That’s not who he is anymore.

Nico takes a long, shuddering breath and drives home.

 


End file.
